Website quality and culture an integrative theoretical model with empirical validation

Most of the existing website quality models focus on general aspects of websites and pay little attention to the importance of cultural aspects. Moreover, a large proportion of the validation of website quality models took place in either a single or a similar cultural environment, i.e. Australia, America or Britain, without any actual cross-cultural validation. Furthermore, due to the dynamic and rapidly changing nature of the web, some of the quality attributes introduced in the previous website quality models are now practically out of date. This presents a need to introduce a technologically improved and culturally orientated website quality model through a cross-cultural validation. The purpose of this study is to pay attention to both hard-line factors by developing a culturally orientated and highly advanced website quality model that is especially tailored towards the less debated cultures: Asian/Eastern - collectivist and high power distance. Malaysia is selected for its collectivist and high power distance culture, representing the Asian perspective. Britain is selected as another cultural setting in order to test the practicality of the research model and to fulfil the completeness criteria of the research. The proposed website quality model is developed based upon insights from a number of theoretical perspectives and up-to-the-minute quality attributes in order to sustain the research model with the latest website development.

Through a survey research strategy, data was collected from an overall sample of 350 students, 175 from Malaysia and 175 from Britain. The collected data was then analysed by using various statistical analysis techniques. The results obtained from statistical analysis (descriptive statistics, t-test and correlation analysis) indicated that the model is best suited to Malaysia or a culture based on collectivism and hierarchy. This suggests that the web cultural values reflecting collectivism and hierarchy embedded in the design quality dimension have an impact on the overall quality of the website.

Simultaneously, the rest of the quality dimensions (information quality, usability quality and interaction quality) and the latest quality attributes were considered important on both sides of the world, making the research model flexible and partially practical at a universal level.

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